


your soul is painted like wings of butterflies

by thelabours



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: M/M, canon era and post canon, gratuitous usage of john milton quotes, slightly OOC, tendou satori is a romantic poet at heart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-01
Updated: 2017-03-01
Packaged: 2018-09-27 01:52:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9945149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thelabours/pseuds/thelabours
Summary: in which tendou satori learns to wax poetry about losses, wins, physics, and the sun.“Our torments also may in length of timeBecome our Elements.”





	

_“O sun, to tell thee how I hate thy beams  
That bring to my remembrance from what state I fell, how glorious once above thy sphere.”_

In hindsight, Tendou should’ve seen this coming.

In the way that his instincts had paved a path through volleyball to eminent success and glory, so had they given way to bitter, bitter loss. Loss of paradise.

The last game of his volleyball career stood at a standstill; he knew the moment he stepped foot into the Shiratorizawa gym #3, the cresting waves would crash and then…silence.

His eyes search for the person they owe their defeat to—a boy with rust coloured hair and fire in his eyes that never seemed to die out. 

As they stretch, Tendou tells his best friend to keep going at volleyball (he wants to live vicariously through Wakatoshi, but he’d never say that out loud) so that one day he can tell people, “I used to be best friends with Wakatoshi in high school!” Wakatoshi makes no comment, only nodding. It seems the defeat lay heavy in his mind too, despite the noble speech he gave earlier. 

Slowly, Tendou lets the misery seep into his bones, heavy as lead, yet he knows he has to jog back with the others, back to Shiratorizawa gym #3 because after their loss, Washijou will not look them in the eye anymore.

One last look at the boy with coppery hair and the itch to win, win, _win_ and Tendou feels his stomach sink. Not the smug glasses blocker, not the annoyingly competent libero, not the genius setter. The boy who seemed to fly. _Farewell, my paradise_. The paradise that had been his sanctuary, now no more. His heart splinters silently. Not as a dramatic supernova of crushing failure, as he’d expected, but a soft ache that would well out tears in the dead of night, under the covers in his dorm, under the cover of darkness. He re-ties his laces and runs to catch up with Eita, who looks equal parts annoyed and upset and Tendou doesn’t want another scolding. Three from Washijou are enough for today.

The thing is, even though he’s no longer officially part of the volleyball club (he’s expected to retire, so the new members can step up and triumph where their predecessors could not), he still finds himself at the practices, nitpicking at Taichi’s blocking posture and teaching the new ones the art of guess blocking. 

They still go out for runs, of course. And on almost every single one of them, the universe decides it fucking _hates_ Tendou and he sees the little orange haired hobgoblin. Tendou doesn’t stop to say hello; that’d be fraternising with the enemy and both Wakatoshi and Washijou would not be pleased. He grins because the little shrimp is quite the charmer for eliciting a strong competitive emotion from Wakatoshi.

They see each other, Tendou and the boy who can fly, but they never talk. Until…

“ _Ooof!_ Sorry I wasn’t looking where I was goin— _gwaaah! You!_ ”

The shrimp has quite the nerve to say ‘looking for a fight huh?!’ and Tendou just wants to laugh because up close, the boy is even shorter than he looks and his eyes are…not quite honey, not quite amber, not quite a lot of words Tendou probably doesn’t have names for.

He hasn’t forgotten the sting of losing when he sees that the boy is still in his volleyball uniform, but he lets it slide. There’s only so many times you can let your heart break on purpose in a day. Instead, he says, “ __you’re the one who crashed into me, Shrimpy. Are _you_ looking for a fight?” and offers his most menacing smile. For dramatic effect.

Shrimpy, as expected, looks intimidated and a string of platitudes are offered but Tendou brushes them aside and offers him his hand

(don’t ask, he doesn’t know why)

and offers his name

(doesn’t know why he’s doing this)

(he may have offered his heart too)

(he just hasn't understood it yet)

That night, he dreams of, not his childhood demons mocking him, but bright orange flashes, a light feeling low in his stomach, almost like he was floating, of flying high in the sky…

He asks Wakatoshi about Shrimpy Hinata Shouyou the next day.

Turns out, he and Hinata Shouyou cross paths every day. The route he and Wakatoshi take during their runs crosses the road travelled by Hinata Shouyou on his way home. Tendou lacks Wakatoshi’s stamina, and prefers his runs wholesome and not rushed (his rationalisation for his low speed), and picks a fight with Hinata Shouyou every day.

They have progressed from rivals to exchanging blows on the court to rivals who have exchanged phone numbers and now, to rivals exchanging blows over text. That is if Tendou can decipher Hinata Shouyou’s text talk. There are too many exclamation marks. (Much like the boy himself, Tendou muses).

Talking helps, really. Tendou knows he has Eita, and Wakatoshi, and Reon, and Hayato, and the rest to lean on for support, but they don’t make him feel like Hinata Shouyou does. It’s as if his veins are laced with sunshine, as if he’s waded into the sewers of dark, dark thoughts in the recesses of his body and gathered the bits of Tendou’s shattered heart. And Tendou and tell if him piecing them together is intentional or not.

It’s the way he talks, Tendou argues with his mind, full of enthusiastic fuck-ups of the day (“I spilt ink all over my assignment and the teacher thought it was on purpose! It wasn’t!”), in a voice with a blithesome lilt, sounding the way one might expect nectar to taste.

His brain will reply, that it was actually Hinata Shouyou’s smile that causes wildflowers to bloom in Tendou’s chest. Tendou will try to weakly defend himself before agreeing. Hinata Shouyou did have a pretty smile. It makes his insides feel like an abstract painting of chrome yellows and lilacs _on fire_.

It’s towards the end of the school year, when Tendou has to graduate and Hinata Shouyou, Tendou understands now, has learnt, has _recognised_ , the bitter taste of loss. National tournaments bring crushing disappointment and an adrenaline rush to those that compete and fail. The strong conquer all and the vanquished recede into darkness, to try once again another year, another generation.

What Tendou learns is that the sun has dark spots, where it doesn’t shine as brightly as it should. That Hinata Shouyou has dark spots too but Tendou is adamant that eclipsed, the sun is all the mightier when it rises again. And he is proved right, the next year when he watches the match (and a soaring ginger boy) on the tiniest screen imaginable and an excited voice going ‘ _fwaaah_ and _hyaaah_ ’ in his ear. Hinata Shouyou, he thinks, I’m glad you are my star.

Tendou counts that they have made 26 official, planned outings in the time that he has known Hinata Shouyou, and a little over a hundred casual ones, where Hinata Shouyou sits in front of in the tiniest apartment imaginable and teaches him the laws of thermodynamics. 

Of unsustainability and entropy and enthalpy.

(Hinata Shouyou deserves poetry written about him, Tendou thinks, waiting impatiently for the shrimp to finish working out the sum he’d given him fifteen minutes ago)

It makes him attend all the matches and every time he sees him his heart jumps and he thinks that maybe starless skies are dark because they hide away stars for themselves. He hugs Hinata Shouyou when they finally win the Nationals in his third year. It’s aggravating because Tendou has never won the Nationals, but the overwhelming pride he feels shuts him up. It is a strange feeling like his stomach houses a hundred and one bees, hungry to be let out. But at the same time, he feels strangely at peace with their hum. Content, even.

Some nights he thinks, it may have been a gamble, to fall in love (yes, he has admitted this to himself, in the dead of night, on a moonless night for the signature Tendou Satori dramatic effect) with a star, and for what? redemption for his ransacked soul? For the star’s life force? What does the starless sky, the blackest of holes crave? Insomnia, ever the faithful maiden, does not leave his side, her hand casting shadows like guillotines until he hears from Hinata Shouyou of his graduation.

Hinata Shouyou is much taller now, not, of course, taller than Tendou, but quite a bit taller than their first encounter. Tendou notes this as this sit across from each other, him watching Hinata Shouyou work out his homework assignment (physics…of _all_ the subjects, the boy picked… _physics_ …Tendou would like to _not_ comment on these developments because his major is physics too and…)

“What are you looking at?” Hinata Shouyou asks.

“Today is the Spring Preliminaries final.”

“Yeah! We’ll watch it…once I’m done…” His face droops comically because he isn’t even a quarter of the way through his sixteen sheet homework. Tendou knows he’ll help him out once Hinata has the look of absolute determination (to the point of breaking) on his face…at the cusp of question #12. Tendou is sadistic if you ask him, but on more than one occasion in presence of Hinata, he curses himself for his masochistic tendencies.

“Three years ago, today.”

“Huh? What?” Hinata figures out (finally!) the sign convention for enthalpy was incorrect the _whole time_.

“We met today, three years ago.”

The dawning grin on his face makes Tendou want to clutch at his heart and weep, for the drama queen that he is.

“You put me up on a pedestal of volleyball villainy. I remember the look you gave me after I blocked your first spike. It felt like—“ he clenches his fist. “—magic.”

Hinata scoffs. “No, I only wanted you to notice me.”

Tendou outright chokes on his chocolate milkshake. “What?”

“The other middle blockers…they never seemed to notice me, but you took me pretty seriously…and I liked that.” Hinata’s face has turned the same shade as Tendou’s own hair. He wants to laugh because it’s positively adorable but he also simultaneously wants to punch himself.

“I’m here now. You have all my attention.” He smiles lazily at Hinata, trying to slow down his heartbeat.

“I’m glad. Because you have all of mine, too.” it might have been considered a nonchalant remark, had Tendou not spotted the flush on Hinata’s neck as he tries in vain to find the change in entropy of a system using lord knows what formula, because he's certain the one Hinata is using isn’t even in the realm of thermodynamics.

It feels like he’s walking on a tightrope when he says, “what if I said that I’d give all my attention hereafter?”

Hinata erases the formula and uses the correct one (thank god the sign convention is in place, Tendou has reached the point where he has to start helping or else he’ll _burst_ ) and takes a while to answer.

“Then I’d be happy to give you all of mine too. Forever. Wanna go eat chocolate ice cream and watch the match?”

“You haven’t even finished half your homework, Shouyou.”

And suddenly, a shift in the enthalpy takes place (conversion, not loss, Tendou realises) and Tendou finds himself buried under Shouyou’s green comforter, his own purple ratty blanket, and Shouyou himself, draped over Tendou’s chest, watching the match intensely (it’s Aoba Jousai vs Johzenji, ironically), commenting where required (or, where it more often wasn't) and generally being volleyball nerds. It’s a wonder, really, how far Shouyou has come in terms of terminology, Tendou thinks fondly. 

They make hot rice in the ancient rice maker that takes double the time to cook the rice all the way through (and then some because it's so outmoded that dinosaurs probably made their lunch with this. And died before the rice was ready). Tendou lets Shouyou break the eggs on the rice (they have nothing in the fridge, except half a dozen eggs) even after he's cracked one on the floor and had to clean it up. Forget kings and prophets and commandments, empires were meant to rise and fall, and all civilisations take root where it's antecedent counterpart stood before it, for better or for worse. Like a succession of sorts, Tendou thinks, as he watches Shouyou absentmindedly shove a huge bite into his mouth. He has a couple of grains stick to his cheek. 

And Tendou is sunswept.

_“The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven...”_

**Author's Note:**

> yes so i have returned, once again, to be Extra  
> someone once said that hey classical literature so here i am back at it again with literature x rarepairs  
> (it's a match made in paradise, if you will)  
> also this is for [simran](http://father-egg.tumblr.com) whose exams are just starting (rip fren, i will soon join you in the depths of hell) and she said, "hey have u considered romantic tendou satori" and i said,,,,hEKC so here u go  
> the title of the fic is from "the show must go on" by queen lmao i'm pretentious can u tell yet
> 
> pls leave a kudos and a comment because,,,i need to feel Validated thanks
> 
> come scream at me [on my tumblr](http://cosmogonalley.tumblr.com)


End file.
